Proven Strategies to Safeguard Your Employees, Meet NY and CA Mandates, and Mitigate Risk
According to OSHA, nearly 2 million U.S. workers report workplace violence incidents each year. However, over half of U.S. workers claim their management doesn’t take adequate steps to keep them safe at work. When employees don’t feel safe, it erodes trust, damages morale, and disrupts productivity, putting your culture, reputation, and bottom line at risk.
Join SHIFT for a discussion on the current state of Workplace Violence Prevention, including the NY State Retail Worker Safety Act and California mandates, industry best practices, and actionable strategies to safeguard employees and mitigate risk.
Featuring expert insights from Dave Miller, founder of Pursuit Pathways and a 15+ year law enforcement veteran dedicated to transforming workplaces through proactive safety strategies, and our own Karen Byington, Director, Content Development and Certified Workplace Violence Instructor.
Whether you’re a national company navigating multi-state compliance or a NY-based retailer preparing for the new mandate, this webinar will arm you with what you need to act now.
What You’ll Learn:
✅ 2025 Compliance Changes: What You Need to Know
✅ What’s required for CA & the NY Retail Worker Safety Act
✅ Common implementation hurdles and how to overcome them
Webinar Transcript
Welcome everyone to our webinar from Compliance to Culture, building a Violence Free Workplace.
Just wanna go through a few logistics while everyone is hopping in. And then I’ll do some introductions so you know who we are here sitting talking with you. So if you are attending for SH RM or HRCI credit, we’re gonna provide you with the code about midway through the presentation, so be sure to jot it down and we will follow up with you after the webinar with information about how to submit that for your credit.
We are gonna use the chat feature in the Zoom link, so if you have any questions for us, please put it in to the chat.
If you have any comments, I will monitor it as we go through whichever questions we can answer.
We will do our best. If we don’t answer your particular question, we will make note of it and follow up with you after the webinar to see how we can help.
We are gonna be mentioning both myself and Dave, some of the training that we offer. And so we will also be sending a survey at the end. And if you want more information about any of our programs or trainings at Shift or at Pursuit Pathways, we will give you information on how to follow up with us.
And lastly, if you wanna mark your calendars, we are gonna have our June webinar on Wednesday, June 25th. It’s Brace for Impact, How to Prepare for a Rising Harassment Complaints. So if that is something that’s interesting to you, just mark your calendars and invitations will be sent out shortly.
So that being said, I’m gonna start with introductions.
My name is Karen Byington. I am the director of Content Development at Shift HR Compliance Training. We are a compliance training company and we offer high quality e-learning in the area of both compliance and in workplace culture.
I am a certified workplace violence trainer, and I have been working very closely with our legal team to create courses that meet compliance with California’s SB 5 53, as well as New York Retail Workers Safety Act that a lot of you may be familiar with.
So at Shift, what we do is specialize in providing that high quality e-learning that meets compliance requirements.
Our special guest today is Dave Miller, and we’re so happy to have you here, Dave. Dave is the founder of a company Pursuit Pathways that specializes in providing training that goes beyond just compliance. He provides in-depth and truly custom workplace violence and safety training that builds safer, more engaged, and more resilient organizations.
He has over 15 years of experience working in law enforcement and tactical operations and in business leadership, he spent his career tackling topics of human exploitation, workplace violence, and their direct link to employee disengagement. And he’s driven by a really deep commitment to protecting people and transforming workplace safety. He’s on a mission to empower people, to protect businesses, and to help end exploitation worldwide.
So we’re so happy. Thank you so much for being here, Dave. Thanks, Karen. Thank you. I appreciate being here and jumping in on this.
It’s gonna be fun.
It’ll be fun. So speaking of fun, we are glad that you are all here joining us today, and we recognize that not everyone would describe a webinar on workplace violence as fun necessarily.
Could be a little daunting, maybe even a little uncomfortable, but the truth is it’s really, really important. We have a lot of great information that we wanna share with you today that you can make your workplaces safer, and we wanna let you know how we can help.
So, just a little bit of background to look at what the effects of workplace violence are on the us, kind of why we’re even having this conversation.
So the last time that we have official documented information on the number of fatalities in the US in 2023, there were 740 fatalities as a result of workplace violence.
According to OSHA, workplace violence affects nearly 2 million American workers every year.
And unfortunately, as Dave, I think is gonna mention this number is likely much lower than that because the reality is that most workplace violence is not reported.
It’s highly underreported. In the area of healthcare, it’s estimated that at least 20% of incidents don’t get reported.
So, one other, even more concerning statistic, I think, is that when they surveyed American workers, they found that half of the workers said that they didn’t feel that their management does an adequate job of keeping them safe at work.
So whether this is true that they’re, they are not safe, or that they just don’t feel safe, either way, it’s not good and there’s leave so much room for us to do better.
So it’s also not surprising that workers feeling that way are starting to speak up, up, and legislators are listening.
And so states have been on a roll passing laws and implementing workplace violent safety measures approximately 18 states, I think at last count, including California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey have laws in relation to the healthcare industry requiring some sort of health place workplace violence, safety measures.
At least five more states have those laws pending when it relates to healthcare.
Last year, California passed SB 5 53, which a lot of people have heard about because it was the most sweeping workplace violence law requiring organizations across the state in all indu industries to develop workplace violence prevention plans and to provide workplace violence prevention training annually.
Most recently in the news you’ve heard about back in September of 2024, governor Holle in New York passed the Retail Workers Safety Act, and it requires all retail employers in the state of New York to develop a workplace violence prevention program and provide retail employees with training.
So with the help of Dave, we are gonna dive into not only what your organizations knew need to do to stay compliant but also learn more about the laws and how you like I said, can be compliant, but more importantly, how you can take steps to keep your employees, your customers, and your visitors all safe.
So Dave, I think a good place to start our discussion is to give a little bit of background as to why we seem to be talking a lot more about workplace violence in the last couple of years.
Is it a relatively new issue or does there seem to be some sort of increase in attention to the topic for another reason?
So let’s, we’ll begin with some context around it, but I’m gonna go back here into what you just talked about with less than 2 million or 2 million reports every year through from an OSHA stat.
But it’s highly underreported.
And then shortly after that, you came back with that, less than half of US workers feel as though they’re supported by their employer when it comes to that.
And I think that rate there is that direct disconnect.
If people know that they’re not supported, they’re not gonna report, whether it’s out of fear, embarrassment, lack of knowing what to do there may be reprisal, like whatever it may be is contributing to that.
Workplace violence isn’t something that’s new.
There’s definitely a spotlight on, it feels like it’s probably been shining a lot more brightly lately, and that could be because of new laws that are being passed. There is a noticeable rise in headlines. There are legislative changes.
California really has led the way with Senate Bill 553. Texas – this one’s more related to schools, but they have House Bill number three and now New York with the New York Retail Workers Safety Act.
And there’s, I wouldn’t, the question I would ask is, is workplace violence increasing or are we just finally talking about it more?
Why is the issue now front and center for so many organizations in the us? And one other point to consider is that the thought of violence is that we live in this very chaotic world right now.
And I was recently talking to a colleague he works for the FBI, and he had said that we can’t help but see patterns emerging when it comes to violence in society today. And online spaces are amplifying this outrage and com, you know, it’s contributing towards a, a divide in voices.
And there’s this rhetoric that demonizes institutions or groups of people, and it doesn’t just divide us, but it causes those who might be on the brink of taking action to actually take that unthinkable action.
So no matter whether we’re seeing an increase in violence or it’s just coming more to light now, I think the time to act is now. Whether organizations belong to a state that’s passing bills and passing laws that are requiring workplaces to do this or not, I think we need to take bigger action.
And, but because there’s been, there’s been more events, there’s been more publicly, like higher scale events I think that’s why we’re seeing bills that are being passed and we’re mandating, or there’s mandates being put in place that say that organizations have to, to train this.
And as a society, I don’t think that we can become complacent and fall to a belief that it’s not gonna happen where we work. Workplace violence does not discriminate based on industry. There are industries that are more prevalent to facing acts of violence in them. It doesn’t discriminate against geographic areas. And violence can be at an entry level of things like verbal abuse or it can escalate to active threats or active shooters. And it appears though, as though it happens suddenly, like people are like, oh, I didn’t see that coming.
But there’s often a lot of behavioral cues or premeditated behaviors that could indicate that potential for an escalation of violence.
So back to your original question of why is there increased attention on these topics? Like I said, I think it’s because there’s been more large scale incidents that have occurred that could have been prevented.
Yeah. I, I do wanna get back, I think it’s so important what you were talking about is kind of looking at what are those premeditated behaviors of concern that we can learn about?
And I, so everyone knows, I think we’re gonna dive into that a little bit.
But if you could just maybe give us a little more detail on compliance.
So these laws are being passed and there’s particularly two of the most recent ones that affect probably the largest scale.
Can you dive into a little bit about what are organizations needing to do to be compliant with these workplace violence laws?
Yeah, absolutely. I’m gonna, before we get into California and New York Retail Worker Safety Act I want to talk about healthcare because a lot of these laws are taking certain industries and creating kind of like sub laws or they have their own kind of set of rules to follow by.
There are a lot of states for healthcare worker prevention plans being put in place. Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Washington, Oregon, and Minnesota, I think to name a few.
Anyways, these, these are places, or these states require laws for healthcare facilities to conduct regular risk assessments to identify potential sources of workplace violence.
We’re really looking at where is the violence coming from to develop and implement comprehensive workplace violence plans that are tailored specifically to their settings.
I think that’s a really key thing that we’re gonna, that I’ll dive into more a little bit later.
Providing training to staff on recognizing, preventing and responding to workplace violence and establishing procedures for reporting and investigating incidents of workplace violence.
And the last part that a lot of organizations are falling in with now is having actual active shooter response plans in place.
With regards to California with Senate Bill 553, it’s a three-pronged approach.
It has to include a written plan, there has to be training, and there has to be an incident lock as it relates to training.
It’s required annually for all employees or well for most California employees, except for remote workers that are not affiliated with an actual physical company space.
Workplaces with under 10 employees that are not public facing certain law enforcement and Department of Corrections and healthcare as they already have something specific in place.
The New York law is a little bit different with the Retail Worker Safety Act.
So effective June 2nd of this year, covered employers must adopt a retail workplace violence prevention policy.
The key here is that it has to, they have to provide workplace violence prevention training to all retail employees upon hire and annually thereafter, unless they have fewer than 50 employees.
If it’s fewer than 50 employees, then the training is every two years.
The training must include information on the Retail Worker Safety Act.
It must include examples of measures retail employees can use to protect themselves when faced with workplace violence from customers or lateral violence from coworkers, de-escalation tactics, active shooter drills, emergency procedures, a site-specific list of emergency exits and meeting places in case of an emergency.
And I wanna highlight that this is something that’s often overlooked from organizations.
If you have people within your facility, employees, you’re responsible for them, you don’t want them unaccounted for after an incident happens because it can cause a lot of trouble.
So have those things that are in place where there’s rally points or staging areas afterwards.
And then effective, this is a couple years away still, but January 1st, 2027, employers with 500 or more retail employees statewide are gonna be required to have silent response buttons for internal alerts being put in place.
Now that’s for an internal alert which often, you know, the way, when you get a higher level or higher scale threat within a workplace, most higher threats, active shooters, those incidents end and under three minutes.
And so that’s a long time in the context of an act of threat. And I, you know, I tell people like, just try to hold your breath for three minutes. You can’t do it. You go into panic mode, it feels like an eternity.
And if most active threats situations are actually over before law enforcement can even arrive, it brings us to a point from a training standpoint where we have to address something that can feel really uncomfortable to organizations.
But your people, your employees, they become your first responders. We can’t ignore that.
No. And this is something that changed, right?
David, the original law said that New York, retailers had to have a panic button that I think went to emergency personnel.
And I think that there was, you know, people like you, experts in the industry must have come around because Hochul passed an amendment to it.
You know, they passed an amendment to the law saying, no, it’s gonna be a silent response button for internal, because you can respond so much faster. I think your chances of being able to affect and put down an incident and respond to it is, is so much greater.
Yeah. Even, even on, if it was an external alert that went to first responders to police, by the time that alert comes in, by the time a call taker or somebody gathers the information and understands the threat level, by the time it’s dispatched out, like minutes have passed.
And unless law enforcement happened to be almost right on your doorstep already, it’s not like it, it takes time.
Right. And that’s why like the internal approach and giving people the tools and resources to be able to know how to respond effectively is such a key measure in helping organizations protect their people.
Oh, true. Dave, before you mentioned that, you know, here we’re talking about kind of the worst case scenario of these like active large threats, but you were talking about how workplace violence is, there’s sort of a range.
And so can you talk a little bit about how these laws are defining workplace violence?
It isn’t just active shooter that we’re talking about in the policies and in the training and all.
It’s, it’s much broader than that.
Yeah. Well, I think it’s important that we teach organizations to focus holistically on threats and violence, not just a specific type.
Like you said, Karen. , the New York Retail Safety Act defines workplace violence as any physical assault or acts of aggressive behavior occurring where an employee performs any work related duty, including any verbal or physical attempt or threat to cause physical injury on an employee.
And the intentional display of force giving an employee reason to fear or expect bodily harm against themselves, an intentional wrongful and non-consensual physical contact that causes injury.
And lastly, is stalking an employee with the intent of causing harm of, or causing fear of harm to their physical safety and health.
So it’s really heavily focused on both that lateral violence, like employee on employee, but as well from the outside and, you know, giving those definitions of what violence is True. So Dave, we mentioned before also that we were gonna dive a little bit deeper because I think as much it is important that companies are compliant with the law.
I think it’s even more important that the violence training really helps employers train their employees to learn how to identify potential threats.
So can you talk a little bit about bit in the training?
What are some signs that you teach employees to look for, like, on that broad scale?
Yeah. What are they, what can employees learn to try and take away as far as what to recognize as signs of behaviors of concern? Yeah, There’s, so there’s three areas that we talk about.
There’s behavioral cues that could signal a pending threat indicators of escalating behavior or impulsive or premeditated behavior, right?
So often, I mean, you, you see it, you hear about on the news reports, it’s like, I never would’ve expected Karen to be that person that, you know, would’ve acted or done that, right?
I never would’ve saw. But if you really, look, there’s a lot of cues.
Behavioral cues can be aggression forms of sudden outbursts or hostile language directed at somebody else.
Isolation, are they pulling themselves from group activities at work and just kind of socially isolating themselves from things that occur?
Are they showing a fixation on violence?
Like are they watching YouTube videos that are showing more violent acts or, you know, gunfights or, you know, things like that, right?
That they’re just, they get this fixation on violence.
Erratic actions, which can go with aggression and just overall shifts in their demeanor becoming unusually quiet for themselves, more signs of anxiousness or they become more confrontational.
They’re using threatening language more often and out of context, they’re using, you know, from that includes statements of implying harm or veiled threats fixation on weapons intense anger.
And a lot of people will push boundaries to see what they can get away with.
They’re going to engage in small minor acts of defiance or rule breaking just kind of test, it’s like a little kid, right?
They just like to test the boundaries and see what they can get away with what, you know, what are, what’s mom and dad gonna allow me to do here?
And it’s the, the same in the workplace is like, what, what’s gonna get challenged here and how far can I push the limits on it?
When it becomes too, like impulsive or premeditated behavior, like impulsive behavior, somebody who lashes out in a violent act or, you know, or after a specific interaction with somebody may have, it looks impulsive, but they could have premeditated their attack.
Okay? They could have just entered the premises in what you’re in.
But now there are behavioral cues.
You know, you don’t, you know, somebody walks into your facility, it’s, they’re not looking at you, they’re not making eye contact.
They might appear to be very fixated on a specific task.
They’re carrying concealed objects in a suspicious way that’s not normal for the environment that they’re in, keeping their hands concealed.
Maybe they have frequent visits to a place without doing business there.
So are they trying to get a feel for the routines of workers?
Or maybe if it’s somebody specific that they’re targeting, they could be planning and gathering intelligence on the layout of a location.
There’s a lot that can that can go into that.
And there has to be overall a holistic assessment of the act itself.
It can take time to build up or it can be immediate, and it can lead to the need to take really quick action to prevent the, you know, prevent injury or loss of life of employees and within companies.
Dave, one other, one other sign that I had read about and learned about, I’m wondering if you have any thoughts on, is a change in behavior.
So if you have somebody, an employee, and there’s sort of a drastic change from the way they were, so if they didn’t always, they weren’t always shy.
If you have somebody who’s shy and kind of pulls away from the group that may be a shy person, but somebody who was outgoing and gregarious and there’s a drastic change or change in their hygiene or something along those lines, Like how to, is the question like, how would you address those?
Yeah. Is that, is that something you see as another potential like behavior of concern?
Like something that Yeah. Of significant change in behavior, There’s going to be those, right?
Like it, there’s no one, you can’t just paint it with a brush and say, this is the way in which somebody’s gonna act and it’s gonna be the same across everything.
But we all know if, like, if people are, you know, doing something different or that seems, you know, abnormal now, Karen, like if you came to work and like you cut off your hair like up to your chin and did these things, it wouldn’t be like, oh, Karen’s hair’s changed.
Like, something’s going like, you know, gonna happen.
But it’s, it’s small little subtle changes, right?
And with a lot of people too, it can become with like a lack of care for their appearance, right?
They’re a little bit more sloppy in their dress for what the work, you know, environment may, may require, may be testing, again, like I said, testing those boundaries, showing up a little bit more late.
Like it just seems to be, it’s, it can be very minor things, but those minor things start to stack and, and add up, Right? It makes a lot of sense. I think the other critical component, it’s so important to be aware and kind of recognizing signs. Because then you have so many more people with eyes on the ground and see something, say something and kind of raising that alert level.
Mm-hmm. , but I think there’s also a lot of comfort in for employees in feeling like they have the strategies and the skills to be able to respond to a threat if it occurs.
So can you give us some ideas of the types of strategies that are important that if you’re in a training, what are some things that you would train employees on to be able to do in case they come into a a situation where there’s an active threat?
Yeah. So number one is I think you can prevent active threats before they even happen with certain things.
Especially if it’s maybe an attack against you as an individual. Situational awareness is super important.
If, you know, teach, you can teach employees to recognize early warning signs of escalating behavior, potential violence such as verbal aggression, erratic actions and early recognition can help lead to proactive deescalation or measures being put in place to prevent situations from worsening situational awareness like in different contexts, right?
I’ll talk about this when we’re do working with healthcare where, you know, you’re not giving the best of news all day every day to people, but when we leave work after a 12 hour shift, we’re tired, our heads down, it’s often in our phone looking at it, sending that text message or whatever it may be.
We walk to our car. So there are a lot of things you may miss along the way. You may not see it. And then we as humans, we are habitually creatures of habit. I drive home the exact same way, the same route every single time, not checking my mirrors, right?
And it’s very possible, and it’s happened, you see it in the news, people get followed home and it doesn’t mean someone’s gonna follow you home and attack you right then and there. It’s just like, okay, I know you live at 1, 2, 3, a, b, c lane, right? And that’s where you live now. And that’s where stalking behavior and other things happen, right?
So even just simple with people is like start to start to change your at home. Break up the pattern a little bit.
Organizations can train staff to identify physical cues like somebody with a clenched fist or raised voices. Beyond the next step after situational awareness is utilizing property de-escalation techniques. And so equipping employees with proper verbal and nonverbal communication skills to calm, agitated individuals and knowing how to diffuse tension can really reduce the risk of physical confrontations.
Sometimes people, when they’re blowing up, they just want to be heard, but if they’re feeling as though they’re not heard, right, it can then lead to that propensity of an escalation of violence. Simple things people can do are maintaining a calm tone, use active listening skills, acknowledging a person’s feelings.
All of those things can help deescalate a really heated situation before it comes becomes violent. within companies from a response standpoint, I think personal safety and proper evacuation protocols are essential. Conducting drills, rehearsals regularly.
So employees know the safest evacuation routes their shelter in place, locations where they’re supposed to go in a crisis. Having a mental map or a practice routine ensures a safer and faster response. And I’m gonna talk about that at the end, giving a really good story and example of why that’s important.
But organizations can simulate training scenarios where employees practice getting to their designated safety zones during a drill. And I think above all out else is to take that training seriously in a sense that not to approach it like it’s not going to happen here. And we’re looking at, you know, people often think of threats coming from the outside.
And I spoke to a larger organization a few weeks ago about active threat, active shooter response. And the reply to me was like, well, it’s not really an issue here. We have secured locks and entries. Everybody has to scan the card to get in.
It wouldn’t happen here. And I was like, well, my follow-up question was like, did you know that most active shooter situations actually occur internally?
So I’m like, what is your plan for the employee who’s been planning this for weeks and walks into your building freely every single day?
Okay, what I’m getting at is assuming that it’s not gonna happen leads to complacency and hoping and wishing that it does not happen is not an effective strategy.
Right. Just preparing. Yeah, I get it.
We’re preparing, organizations are preparing for something that’s likely not going to happen at a larger scale, but we also know that regular all forms of workplace violence come into work every single day.
And I think on that generalized workplace violence level, that ensuring that employees know that they’re safe and confidential reporting mechanisms that are in place that employees know where to go, they know how to use ’em, they should be encouraged to report.
And just because a report is made doesn’t mean it’s actually going to be like this blown up thing of workplace violence, but it helps to get a sense of what’s actually going on inside your organization.
And it helps with employees’ belief and not just buy in to feel confident.
And when organizations are doing this right, again, back to the stat at the start, that over half of the employees feel as though their employers don’t take it seriously.
And so by implementing these trainings and showing them that you’re taking the steps and that you have a plan in place, is that first level of getting employees to actually believe that your organization cares about their safety and their wellbeing.
Yeah. Well I think it’s so important.
And like you said, even companies who want to say, well, you know, is it worth it?
Because the likelihood of it happening here is so slim, you know, is it a waste of time?
It’s resources and all, but what it buys you back if you have employees who are confident and feel secure and feel safe, that that impacts their productivity, it impacts their, their feeling of security and safety when they’re at work.
So they’re not, they’re not sitting there spending any of their resources, their mind, their worry on, you know, their surroundings and their atmosphere.
They’re concentrating on work and doing what you hope that they’re supposed to be doing in the office.
Exactly. And not that’s exactly there getting nervous that they don’t know what to do because this person looks strange and they have no idea what, how to react.
So I think building that confidence in your employee pays off in so many more dividends than just if an incident happened to happen in your workplace.
I, I think it builds an intrinsic trust. Like, I don’t think people are going to work and sitting there spending their days worrying about, am I going to something gonna happen bad here today?
Now, if somebody’s being bullied in the workplace, that’s different, they probably go to work every single day feeling worried about is this, you know, the day that something could actually happen.
But when they know that, you know, it’s that, I think it’s, I mean, I get this wrong here.
It’s either David or Stephen Covey. I think it’s right.
People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
And I think it’s that same thing is that employees just want to know that their employers care about them.
And I think safety, right?
People, humans, value their safety.
It’s one of their top things.
Like if we were to go back to the, you know, your hierarchy of needs, it’s safety and security.
And if we have to be, start with that in the workplace to let people know outside and, you know, besides in your home life and everything else, but a lot of these trainings, situational awareness, de-escalation, active threat response, these are things that carry out into the real world, beyond the workplace, right?
If I’m out in a shopping mall, I mean, there’s been countless incidents like Walmart in El Paso, Texas a few years ago had a massive active shooter incident where there’s a lot large loss of life.
It’s happened at concerts, it happens in restaurants.
Take what happened in New Orleans over the Christmas holidays or New Year’s this year, right? Where you get a vehicle barrel through a crowd. Like these are real life tangible skills that people can carry outside of the workplace into their real life and have that sense of security and safety.
Yeah. Dave, we had a comment come in on the chat and let me know if this is something you have an answer for, we’ll respond later.
But somebody said that, what are the risks of active shooter training in the workplace where it’s an internal threat?
Is there a risk of a shooter creating a plan built around the training because they know where people are waiting at evacuation points?
Have you heard this question before?
So I heard it in a completely different context. So outside of the workplace violence, I run training on online exploitation and human trafficking awareness as well. And, and I’m gonna use that as an analogy for this because one question that was posed to me once before was, well, aren’t you just, aren’t you worried that you’re giving people, you know, when you’re teaching about predatory tactics and how somebody you know may groom or re a person in the online world, aren’t you worried that you might be teaching people how to do this?
And so I’m, there’s two answers to that. And it’s the same, same response for the active shooter is one, we, we gotta put it on a, you know, the scales of justice, like balance it out, right?
What outweighs the other?
And to me, proactive training for everybody to understand is going to outweigh the other.
The second one, if somebody’s going to commit a large-scale event like an active shooter, they’ve studied it. They already know the workplace. They’ve often watched military style videos. They know how they’re turning corners. They know how they’re opening doors, they know how to shoot a gun.
So they already know basically what that response plan is going to look like and be.
So when we weigh out the probability there, what’s better preparing our people to react quickly?
Yes, most active shooters as well.
So part of what organizations do, or part of what the training should involve is a really like sound lockdown procedure internally now more linearly and more commonly known.
It’s run, hide, fight. Which I think that there’s I, and we, we teach it a a I mean this is a biased opinion, a better model that’s a little bit more cyclical. It helps with the decision making.
Because if we just teach people to run and you don’t know where you’re running to, you could be running towards danger. If I just say hide and you hide under a desk, you’re a sitting duck.
So if we go into lockdown, most active shooters, their goal is, is to kill as many people as they possibly can in a time. And so they’re not gonna sit there wasting time on locked doors.
So even if they know, part of the internal response plan is you’re gonna lock the doors, you’re gonna barricade the door, you’re gonna turn off the lights, you know that these steps, if they can’t get into that room, they’re gonna keep going.
So, you know, fantastic question, you know, way to think about it.
But it’s, it’s going to outweigh giving people the proper tools and response mechanisms in order to protect them and prevent, you know, massive loss of life.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Dave, can you talk a little bit about, kind of in the same vein, I guess is what evidence is there that any of these laws are effective and the training is effective in keeping employees safer?
Safer? Yeah. From both healthcare and re retail perspective healthcare facilities in Pennsylvania had implemented Pennsylvania had done studies, Michigan, New Jersey, California and really measured the successful results on these.
And these were all from healthcare area Jefferson Health in Pennsylvania, they achieved a 55% reduction in violence related injuries over three year period.
A series of hospitals in Michigan, I think that they had seven hospitals that they had implemented controlled trial studies of workplace violence.
They experienced a 50% reduction in violent defense after a period of six months and more than a 60% reduction in violence related injuries after 24 months.
New Jersey following when they put in a violence prevention plan for healthcare facilities, I think it was, it was called the violence Prevention and Healthcare Facilities Act Hospitals there reported that 85% of them, they offer differentiated levels of training for their employees with staff in high risk areas that received specialized instruction and it contributed towards overall improved safety outcomes.
And I think with, when we look at healthcare, that’s really specific too, that you’re looking at not just high risk areas.
Because we think of things like psychiatric wards emergency departments in healthcare to be your highest risk areas.
But there was a , incident in a hospital that happened in, and it carried over from a domestic violence incident where a woman was giving birth in a maternity ward.
So you don’t think you know of maternity or women and children’s to be a high risk area.
But there, you know, we’ve seen attacks in those areas. So I think and response methods to different types of facilities or different areas within healthcare matters.
Retail, Starbucks, McDonald’s, Kroger, these are all major level organizations who have implemented de-escalation training and have all seen significant reductions in workplace violence.
Starbucks, they initiated training after a series of customer aggression incidents. And so that they saw it was very important to implement training with their employees and it really helped strengthen the overall workplace safety culture.
Kroger rolled out workplace violence prevention training programs to reduce violent incidents across their stores. And it lowered their overall security costs that they had associated with and liability claims that they had associated with workplace violence.
Chicago McDonald’s in Chicago did this as well, that they introduced safety training programs and it had a dramatic impact on their overall employee turnover as well, because when people feel safer going to work, they’re a lot more likely to stay because it improved the confidence amongst their staff and being able to manage workplace risks.
I think it’s, the quality of training makes a big difference as well.
Organizations, a question that they need to ask themselves is, are our staff confident in the moment of crisis or are they just compliant on paper?
And I, there’s a real key difference between the two right between, and I understand there’s a major need, Karen, to check a compliance regulatory box and that you are compliant with the laws that are in place, but do people feel confident in that moment of crisis or do they just have that check mark beside their name to say that they’ve gone through the training?
And there is a difference between the two and I think how the, the trainings delivered plays a big role into that.
Yeah, for sure. , I real quick, wanna jump in.
Thank you to Kristen who put in the chat the HRCI code, which is 7 0 4 3 4 4 and the SHRM code, if you’re looking for SH RM certification credit is two five dash 4G as in George, A as in Adam, Z as in zebra, C as in Charlie.
So it’s in the chat you can write it down and reach out to us following this and , we’ll give you the credit.
Dave, just to go back to talking about the quality of the training and the quality of the policies that you put in place and implement in the workplace, can you just talk a little bit more about other things that make the training effective and what should organizations be looking for when they’re assessing different training options?
Yeah. I think job specific training makes a really big difference, Karen compliance, like I said, you know, compliance regulatory training is needed out of the box, training is needed, but sometimes with some simple tweaks, training can be made industry specific and going further, you can make it job specific.
What a nurse in an ER is going to experience is completely different than what somebody working in a maternity ward, pediatrics oncology or somebody who’s just working in a hospital administration is going to face what a cashier at a retail store experience is going to be different than what somebody working in warehousing is going to experience.
So I think with some simple tweaks, you can talk to people that makes the training relevant to them, and when it’s relevant and understandable, they’re a lot more apt to engage with it and they’re going to remember it.
And if in the time of need when they have to ever practically deploy those skillsets, they’re gonna be able to draw on them because the training made sense to them.
Everybody, you know, like I said, in, in the case of active shooter training, various employee roles are gonna respond differently based on their environment.
It sounds like. I know organizations, right?
They’re like, it’s gonna be a lot to do, but it’s not that difficult to implement role specific training that feels good to everybody that’s involved. And I think the last part with it is to deliver training in a way that feels good for people not fear driven.
You know, I know when active shooter training, you know, initially came out, companies would bring in these kind of more paramilitary type of organizations and they’d be shooting fake guns and like loud blast noises, but that can induce trauma responses from people and that doesn’t necessarily help to learn.
Now the initial impact was like, let’s make a really strong emotional impact on somebody here and let’s start doing this and let’s get their heart rates elevated.
And there’s a time and a place for that.
But I think that type of training should be voluntary for people to go to training should be and can be delivered in an impactful and meaning way that’s, you know, more trauma informed, it’s a sensitive subject.
So there’s going to always be that balancing act on how do we get this training across so everybody benefits from it. And so we don’t trigger anybody in this in the process with it.
Yeah, that is a really, that is really tough.
I mean, knowing that we’ve rolled out our training last year and trying to be sensitive to those, and you know, the requirements under the law, you have to talk about, you know, active shooter situations, you need to talk about scenarios and it’s really hard to do in a way that is not necessarily triggering for everyone.
So the images that you choose and the way you go about and approach it is, is tough.
You don’t wanna sugarcoat and make it seem like it’s, you know, very lighthearted topic, but at the same time yeah, you can roll it out in a way that it is not as triggering for some people who may be a little more sensitive based on previous experience or just their, their comfort level.
So it is a, it is a tricky balance.
So that brings me here to talk about, I think organizations struggle to know how to even start.
So a law is passed, or even if a law isn’t passed, they decide at upper management that this is important and they, they wanna do something to, to improve safety for their workers.
How do they even start to implement these types of policies and trainings?
Where should an organization begin from day one if they know they wanna, they wanna do something? How do you, Yeah, the, again, the getting belief is what you need, not just buy-in.
People need to believe in what it is that you’re doing.
Internally, I think identify anybody who’s working in risk management or rather training areas but involve people from other teams too.
And, you know, get, create teams, create pockets of teams and identify who is going to be able to lead the process, who’s gonna take it seriously, who needs to be involved.
Next is build a policy that identifies all risk areas, not just at risk areas, okay. Because all areas can be a risk.
And when building a policy use model plans that are already in place by California and New York, I don’t think that companies or organizations that they’re outside of those states need to go and reinvent the wheel.
Because I think as training rolls into other states, they’re going to mimic and follow what’s already in place. They’re going to look for proven models.
So if you’re implementing something, use the policies that are already in place make training accessible.
I believe so much in e-learning.
I know that’s one reasons, you know, why shift aligns so much with me as well, that it should be the first step to ensure that everybody has access to it.
Because if we’re running a training day today and 5% of the workplace population calls in sick or they’re off on doing other things or they can’t make it, they’re never gonna get that training.
Whereas e-learning allows for more accessibility and access to it.
People can do it on their own time.
And then for those organizations who want to go more in depth, you can explore in person options or train the trainer model.
So now you can start running internal training teams. When you’re choosing somebody or an organization to work with, they should work with somebody who’s gonna help them develop the best path and plan specific for their needs, not just basic, you know, out of the box customized training.
E-learning again though is the easiest way to get through any, you know, of that compliance training that’s needed.
Ensure you’re on the right track, ensure that, you know, and this is something that Shift does a great job is with, is helping organizations to navigate the complexities of the law.
Like a lot of people just hit that wall and go, I don’t understand this.
Where do I begin? What is, you know, what do I need to do?
So that really helps ensuring that training is compliant and you’re gonna cover off all of your mandated areas.
I mean, whether we like it or not, if an incident happens and we’ve missed something in the law, and when I say we, I mean as an organization, we’re gonna be taking a task on that.
We’re gonna be held responsible.
So have somebody that’s going to help you get through.
It’s kinda like working with an accountant.
If you try to do your own taxes and you miss something, the IRS is coming after you, right?
So work with an accountant to make things like that, that are more complex, a little bit easier.
And then I think a key thing is don’t underestimate the importance of an incident debrief with an organization.
Every impact, every incident can impact individually differently.
What bothers one may not bother another person, but even an incident of somebody being yelled at can cause anxiety and build up trauma or trigger past experiences that they’ve had when it comes to employee wellness and leading back to causes of disengagement.
I think that this is such a critical part, is showing your people that you care and that you’re going to provide the aftercare or at least offer that aftercare for them to take forward and be able to continue to live a happy and healthy life.
Yeah, it’s so important.
Dave, you have, you shared a story with me that really I think brings together all of what we’ve talked about and the importance of why we do it.
I want you to share that, but before we do, I just wanna give a few key wrap ups so we don’t to miss anyone.
We went through a lot of details today about what’s required in California SB 5 53, what’s required under the New York retail Worker Safety Act.
If you need any more information about the details, but that’s in those we have resources that we can provide you.
So reach out to us after the webinar and we’ll be sure to, to give that information to you.
And if you want any more information or to look at shifts training to help you meet the compliance with those laws and see how we kind of address some of these issues that go beyond to make sure that we’re actually providing something that’s effective.
We’d love to show you a demo. Just let us know.
We can set you up with somebody who can show you a sample of the course.
And if you wanna reach out to Dave to kind of dive deeper and see how he can help you put together an entire plan, help you with assessments, or provide training that goes even deeper when it comes to active threats reach out and we will put you in contact with Dave to reach out.
Just another reminder that it is in June on the 25th, we have that next webinar where we’re gonna be talking about preparing for rising harassment complaints.
It’s another really important topic and wanna help you with that.
So jot down that and look for the invitation.
And now Dave, if you wanna just kind of bring this all to a conclusion, I think with, with the story you shared with me, I think really gets to the heart of why we’re doing what we’re doing.
Yeah, absolutely, Ken.
I do want to thank you, Karen, just for and shift for inviting me on today.
It’s protection of people in a lot of different forms is something I’m just, I’m super, super passionate about and I really love, you know, this, this level of workplace violence training.
And as I was, you know, as I was going into this world, I, I once came across a story and it’s in relation to nine 11 in the World Trade Centers.
And there was a gentleman by the name of Rick Rescorla. He was hired initially as a corporate security guard for a company called Dean Whitter Reynolds. And they later merged with Morgan Stanley. And Morgan Stanley was one of the largest, or I think they were the largest tenant at the World Trade Center. Long before nine 11 ever happened risk scoreless foresaw the risk of an attack. And this was after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
And he began to implement regular mandatory evacuation drills. But he was getting a lot of pushback from leadership. Like, this is timely, you’re interrupting people’s days, you’re doing things, but he, he didn’t care. Like they’d go into a meeting and he’d bring his bullhorn and his walkie-talkies and everything else that he had, and he would put people through mandatory drills that would take five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and he, he didn’t just talk about safety, like he trained for it.
He timed people, he corrected slow movers, he gave them mental role play for crisis response. And so when we look now, you’ve, you know, fast forward to the morning of September 11th, 2001 after the first plane struck, the first World Trade Center tower authorities announced over a PA system for people to stay put, but Rick Ula ignored that.
He grabbed all of his training tools, his his bullhorn, his walkie-talkies, and he led the evacuation of Morgan Stanley’s 22 floors, 2,700 employees. And thanks to his relentless preparation, nearly every single employee made it outta that building safely that day that he oversaw. He though went back in to help others, and unfortunately, Rick lost his life. He was never found. But his legacy was clear that it wasn’t just what he did that day, it was everything that he did beforehand that saved lives.
Okay? It is a shining example of how training and having a plan in place can really help take that decisive moment and turn a moment in of chaos into coordinated survival. Again, like I said, I know I said it with talking about active shooters.
Yes, it’s highly unlikely that these things are going to happen, but they do happen. And I just think that we live in a day and age where unfortunately we’re only going to start seeing more and more of these incidents and attacks and preparation is such an integral thing for just protecting organizations and people, like I said, the safety that you’re giving people skills that they can take out of the workplace and apply it to the real lives and apply it to their families as well.
Yeah, there are real world consequences and benefits for, for doing the work and doing it the right way and making the effort.
And that story, Dave, just gives me such chills.
I have very good friends that were in those towers that day, and clearly they had received that type of training and as soon as that first plane hit, they evacuated even though they were being told to stay behind.
So, you know, personal experience and having friends who were there and, you know, listened to the training that they had received previously and, and left, and it saved their lives and their families impact were impacted.
You know, it just, it makes such, such a difference.
So I’ve, I really appreciate, I so admire your passion and the work that you do, and I thank you for joining us and, and bringing all of this thank, sharing this with all of us.
So thank you all for attending today.
I think we’re leaving with about five minutes to spare, so we can hang on for a few minutes.
If you have questions that you wanna post in the chat that you didn’t post beforehand, we can stick around for a couple of minutes to see.
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We always appreciate your feedback and we hope that we will see you again in June.
Thanks for attending everybody. Thanks Steve. Thank You.
